The Manzoni Family (12 page)

‘Dear friend, oh! how happy Alessandro is, he has hit upon a good writing spell. . . We had vaguely hoped to see Mrs and Miss Clarke, thinking they would pass through Milan on their way back to France, but unfortunately this is not to be,' again Grandmother Giulia writing to Fauriel. He had finally announced he would be arriving soon. ‘I think you will receive our letter, so I must tell you we cannot get to Florence this summer, so Brusu awaits you . . . We will remain in our Thebaid at Brusii; after all the plays, the balls and masquerades in Florence, I dare say you must be longing for your cell. Alessandro is overjoyed at the thought of having you with him, so you can have some good chats
over breakfast;
I need not mention Enrichetta and myself, for you know our feelings; your goddaughter loves you as dearly, but always imagines she is not loved. . . You will talk to Alessandro about the
Mercato Vecchio,
because it is for him the whole of Tuscany. '

‘How can you be so good as to take an interest in the trifles that come from my pen?' Manzoni wrote to Abbé Degola, who had written again after a long silence. ‘Do you know what sort of thing I am struggling with as if it were a matter of great importance? It is the sort of composition whose authors your Nicole — and mine — unhesitatingly called
empoisonneurs publics.
I have certainly done everything in my power not to deserve this title, but have I succeeded?' Pierre Nicole, a seventeenth century Jansenist, in his book
Les
imaginaires
et les visionnaires,
had launched a bitter attack against a satirical comedy by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin called
Les visionnaires,
which had offended Jansenist severity. Manzoni obviously thought his novel might offend Jansenist severity. ‘When you have seen this work, I shall await your judgment with impatience and some little trepidation. I warn you, however, that, as a good author, I have prepared an apologia against any objections that could possibly occur to you, and I intend to justify my work not only against the reproach of perniciousness, but also on the score of utility. But these are jests: in all charity, pray to Him who is not deluded that He may condescend to keep me from wretched self-delusion. And since you want to know how far I have got, I will add that the 2nd volume is at the printer's, and I hope in three or four months to say the same of the 3rd and last. '

Fauriel spent the whole of the summer of 1825 at Brusuglio; in October he suddenly returned to Milan and left Italy. He left secretly, leaving a book as a present for Grandmother Giulia, a small sum of money for a doctor who had treated him, and a brief farewell note. He gave no reason for a departure so sudden and hasty as to seem a flight, and his friends never knew what it was; perhaps he had some money troubles; or perhaps he simply feared the commotion and tears of goodbyes. During the summer he had expressed the intention of leaving Italy for a short period, and then returning; but he never returned, and his friends never saw him again. In November he wrote from Marseilles: ‘If anything could increase my unhappiness at leaving you, and my regrets for having left you, it would have been the inconveniences and delays I have suffered on the journey. I was obliged to spend three whole days in Turin, so I had time to digest the heavy beauty of the city, with the sole company, when I had it, of a Polish braggart and a mason from Milan, who was responsible for that wretched grave in which goodness knows how many people were buried last winter. Likewise I was held up at Nice where I was even more bored than in Turin, despite my walks by the sea, and my excursions into countryside which, like all the beautiful localities of Provence, looks rather like a garden set in a casket of rocks. . . As for Marseilles, I can't say whether I was amused or deafened by the noise, the bustle and activity of this mercantile population. . . Although everything I've been seeing and hearing for some days convinces me I'm in France, I don't feel completely
repatriated,
and I grieve for something of Italy, especially you and everything about you. . . I can tell from here that in spite of so much that is dear to me there, I shall not like Paris at all. . . But since I have ceased to be one of you, I grow daily more impatient to get to Paris, and I am weary of highways and inns. — Adieu, I clasp you tightly, so tightly in my arms, all, grown-ups and little ones, those dear little ones whose beloved faces, voices, and even their merry noise, still seem to be with me, so that I look round expecting to see them. I would weep if I thought of them and of you all too often. . .'

From Toulouse, where he stopped for a few days to pursue his studies, he wrote to Mary Clarke: ‘Since I left Narbonne, I have spent almost all my time in horrible places, with no company but my guides, exhausted by long walks on paths the like of which I have never seen in the wildest corners of the Alps. — Adieu, dear friend of my heart, we will meet soon. This is my fondest hope.' Although it was his fondest hope to see her again, and although she too expressed in every letter to him her desire to be near him, they made no attempt to be together always, and she wanted to keep their relationship hidden; perhaps he did too; this relationship of theirs was passionate but troubled and complicated, and they kept separating, and so it went on, with long separations and long exchanges of letters, for years, until he died.

'You've gone, dear, too dear friend to us all!' wrote Grandmother Giulia to Fauriel. ‘You have left your family, ah, if you knew how many tears you caused us to shed! the children are inconsolable and Enrico threatens anyone who utters your name. . . What can I say about Giulia or Pietro? in their sensitive and reflective natures silence is eloquent, if I may put it like that, while we could not appease Cristina's sobs. My Alessandro, ours and yours, feels your absence more than you can imagine. Believe me, I am not exaggerating. Enrichetta regards you as one of our family, and cannot be consoled for this sort of laceration; it is as if you have scattered a bundle that was so closely tied. And I who am writing this - I weep more bitterly than all the rest.'

‘Dear friend, 
'
 wrote Manzoni, ‘the feelings your departure left in our hearts cannot easily be expressed, and are not the sort one likes to chat about. I can add nothing to what Mama has said. You can imagine how impatient we are to hear from you. '

‘My dearest godfather,' wrote Giulietta. It was the first of the many letters she wrote to him.
Mon bien cher parrain; mon cher parrain.
Writing to Fauriel became a fond habit and pleasure. She wrote in place of her father, who was too busy. This first letter is still timid. ‘I am always being scolded because my foolish timidity outweighs my desire to write to you. However seeing that everyone keeps putting it off till tomorrow, and Papa scolds us all, I am resolved to be the kindest, and to make a virtue of something really very dear to me, of being able to converse for a moment with you, as it's so long (long for me, at least) since I bored you with my chatter, as I did when we had the pleasure of having you here with us. After a month of waiting, and dare I say anxiety, we have had your dear letter. But why keep us waiting and longing like that? And now who knows when we'll have another. You know how we love you, and (especially we women) how we tend to worry and imagine all sorts of misfortunes, so don't leave us to languish so long in fantastic suppositions, fortunately dissipated by your letters which always announce, somewhat belatedly, that you are in good health and that nothing unpleasant prevented you from telling us so before. Not a day goes by without our talking of you. . . Mother sends you her best regards, she is rather poorly these days, but as this is the result of her condition, nobody seems worried, which makes her say not only has she to suffer but also to hear everyone say it's quite natural and nothing at all, poor Mama! However, she feels the moment of her release can't come too soon.' Enrichetta was pregnant. She was so ill she thought she would die in childbirth, and towards the end of her pregnancy she made a will. She wrote a letter to her husband, which she kept hidden. ‘To you, my beloved Alessandro, I venture to declare my intentions, in case God in His Divine Wisdom takes me from this world. . . Although I have very little to dispose of, I wish to leave at my death a little memento to those who were most dear to my heart.' There followed a detailed enumeration of her possessions, money, small jewels and shawls, which she wanted to go to her husband, her mother-in-law, her children, the servants and the poor.

In his letters Fauriel asked for news of ‘Signor Blondel and the Signora', that is, Enrichetta's brother, Enrico Blondel, and his wife. After many years Enrico Blondel had renewed relations with Alessandro, which had been broken off at the time of the conversion; now the two brothers-in-law met often and exchanged books, ideas and affectionate letters. Manzoni had written to him once, when they had recently resumed relations: ‘It happens all too often that differences of opinion, and especially of faith, freeze the good will between men. Such a difference existed between us but we never spoke of it; we both avoided any discussion that might expose it. Now we have broken the ice, I feel an even stronger need of reassurance that the friendship you have shown me, which is most precious to me, has not suffered thereby. Suffice to say that for me nothing has changed, and nothing can ever change, either the feelings of universal charity that bind me to you as to all men, or the particular feelings of esteem and friendship which I have vowed to you, or the happy relations created between us by the person who came from your family into mine, to be at once a consolation and an example to us. ' Enrico Blondel had been seriously ill for years; his young wife looked after him; he had married Louise Maumary, who was his niece, daughter of a sister. Louise,
tante Louise,
would be very important in the life of the Manzoni family.

In January 1826 news came from Genoa that Abbé Degola had died. His nephew, Prospero Ignazio, wrote to Manzoni. ‘Poor Don Eustachio had had bronchitic attacks two or three times over the last few years, and they became more frequent and led to vomiting. In order not to feed his illness he lived on a very strict diet, abstaining from any stimulants, and this caution enabled him to get through the summer and autumn reasonably well, but without succeeding in eradicating the germ of his illness, the symptoms of which reappeared at the beginning of December last. After two weeks of unavailing treatment, he was stricken by acute pains in the head, so persistent that they tormented him to the end. . . The patient went into a steady decline, and, losing his joviality, appeared indifferent to the company even of his best friends; finally he showed unmistakable signs of a failure of his mental faculties, often asking for the same thing, and talking quite at random. But it was not until Friday the 13th of this month that we began to fear for his life, as he lay in a deep lethargy. Then on Saturday he roused himself and was fully conscious to receive the last rites. Nothing could disturb his
tranquillity.
And therefore, setting aside all worldly thoughts, he turned only to thoughts of Heaven. . . What resignation between the spasms! What virtue! Four hours before his death he asked for some of his family, and summoning all his remaining strength to his cold lips, he took a tender farewell of us, and turning to me said
love me,
I promised it, whereupon he added
but if you love me, do what I have always told you:
words spoken with such effort and love that I shall never recall them without tears. . .'

In March 1826 Enrichetta had a baby boy who was called Filippo. She could not feed him herself, so a nurse was taken.

‘My dear friend,' Fauriel wrote to Manzoni, ‘It was double pleasure to receive your news from the amiable messenger who brought it, and who has so courteously passed on the news he has continued to receive from you.' The ‘amiable messenger' was Giacomo Beccaria, Manzoni's cousin. ‘I was most of all eager to have news of our very dear Enrichetta; so you can judge my delight to hear that she had safely given birth to a fine handsome little Filippo, who will, I hope, soon take over Enrico's place on my shoulders. . . I am still in rather low spirits, if less so than the last time I wrote: and perhaps this is why my health is not so good as when I left Brusuglio and the Pyrenees. Paris is not one whit more pleasing to me than when I first arrived, and I can't imagine I can stay cooped up here all summer. . . If I were free to consider only my own wishes, feelings and desires, I would fly back to you and find, the well-being and calm that surrounded me, and I cannot bring myself to give up all hope of such a sweet prospect. But the fact is I have committed myself to some serious work with fixed dates for completion, which obliges me to use my time judiciously, and to remain in or near Paris. . . When I consider how much remains to be done to complete this task, it is quite frightening, so to avoid being frightened I try not to think too much about it, and to waste as little time as possible.' This letter was delivered by hand, with others for Giulietta and Ermes Visconti, by the Marchese Trotti and his wife, friends of the Manzonis, who often travelled between Paris and Italy. Giulietta replied: ‘Papa says how sorry he is not to be able to write to you, but there is a storm brewing up and he feels so poorly that he really feels unequal to it (as you know, he always feels ill in stormy weather). He wanted to write something in reply to the letter you sent me by the Marchese Trotti; he was so touched that he keeps talking of it. . . . He also wanted to say how sad he is that you will not be at Brusii, which robs him of much of the pleasure he feels in going there. Papa longs to see fruit of your completed labours, which will be doubly pleasing because this liberation may lead to your coming here, so it is a sort of passport which he most eagerly desires. This is what he has told me over and over again to say to you, with such urgency and so little faith in my ability that he has made me more clumsy than usual. . . Filippino is doing very well with the new nurse; he is growing fast and laughs when you talk to him; if he is as cheerful as his nurse, he will be very cheerful indeed. . . I often talk about you to Cavalier Jacopetti who comes twice a week in the evening, and to Princess Pietrasante, and Jacopetti talks about you to please me, and he is not the only one. . .'